US news – Progress Nothing Lesshttp://progressnothingless.com
Your time is now!Tue, 26 Sep 2017 21:15:14 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.2Australian woman Justine Damond shot dead by US police in Minneapolishttp://progressnothingless.com/australian-woman-justine-damond-shot-dead-by-us-police-in-minneapolis/
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 11:45:54 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3765Officers body cameras were not turned on, state officials reveal, as stepson says: My mum was shot for reasons I dont know US police officers have shot dead an Australian woman who reportedly called 911 after hearing a noise near her home in Minneapolis. Minnesotas public safety department said a woman was shot in Minneapolis …

]]>Officers body cameras were not turned on, state officials reveal, as stepson says: My mum was shot for reasons I dont know

US police officers have shot dead an Australian woman who reportedly called 911 after hearing a noise near her home in Minneapolis.

Minnesotas public safety department said a woman was shot in Minneapolis after two officers responded to a callout about a possible assault on Saturday at 11.30pm local time. The police officers did not have their body cameras turned on.

The BCAs investigation is in its early stages. More information will be available once initial interviews with incident participants and any witnesses are complete The officers body cameras were not turned on at the time and the squad camera did not capture the incident. Investigators are attempting to determine whether any video of the incident exists.

The two officers involved are on paid administrative leave.

Her stepson said Damond, an Australian in her 40s, was passionate and his best friend.

Basically my mum was shot for reasons I dont know, he said in a video posted on Facebook on Monday morning.

I just know she heard a sound in the alley so then she called the police and the cops showed up and she was a very passionate woman, she probably thought something bad was happening and then next thing I know they take my best friends life.

The mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, said she intended to find out why the officers body cameras were not turned on.

As mayor of our city, a wife, and a grandmother, I am heartsick and deeply disturbed by what occurred last night, she posted on Facebook.

Damond is believed to have been living in the US for at least the past three years. Her personal website says she trained as a veterinarian and practised yoga and meditation for 17 years.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is providing consular support to the family of an Australian woman killed in the US.

]]>Google told to hand over salary details in gender equality court battlehttp://progressnothingless.com/google-told-to-hand-over-salary-details-in-gender-equality-court-battle/
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 09:43:26 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3762Judge rules tech giant must give US federal department snapshot of its 2014 pay records as part of pay discrimination case A judge has ordered Google to hand over salary records to the government in an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has accused the technology corporation of systematically discriminating against women. …

]]>Judge rules tech giant must give US federal department snapshot of its 2014 pay records as part of pay discrimination case

A judge has ordered Google to hand over salary records to the government in an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has accused the technology corporation of systematically discriminating against women.

Google must provide the federal government with a 2014 snapshot of the data, along with contact information for thousands of employees for possible interviews, according to a ruling made public on Sunday.

Judge Steve Berlin, however, also denied part of the governments request for records and partially sided with Google, which had argued the departments demands were overly broad and could violate employee privacy.

The limited records Google must release could help the Department of Labor (DoL) build a formal pay discrimination case against the company, which has repeatedly refused to disclose key data in what has become one of the most high-profile court battles to date regarding wage inequality in Silicon Valley. The department which had argued that additional records would help explain the extreme gender pay gap it uncovered in an initial audit said in a statement the decision vindicates its vigorous enforcement efforts.

The DoL first publicly accused Google of systemic compensation disparities in April, testifying in a hearing that its preliminary investigation found that women across a wide range of positions at the Mountain View campus were paid less than men.

Berlins decision resolves a more narrow court battle stemming from a DoL lawsuit filed against Google in January, which accused the corporation of violating federal laws in its refusal to turn over salary history and employee contact information. Google has contracts with the federal government, which means it is obliged to comply with equal opportunity laws and has to allow the DoL to review certain internal records.

Google originally provided a 2015 snapshot of salaries. The DoL subsequently requested compensation history and contact information for employees so it could conduct confidential interviews, but Google argued the demands violated fourth amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Berlins ruling, which is a recommended order that still has to be finalized, said Google must provide the comparable 2014 snapshot, though he said the DoLs demands for contact information for more than 25,000 workers was over-broad, intrusive on employee privacy, unduly burdensome, and insufficiently focused.

Instead, Google has to provide personal information for up to 8,000 employees the DoL selects, the ruling said. Berlin also denied the departments broader request for salary and job history data, saying the demands create an unreasonable burden on Google and its employees.

The departments regional solicitor Janet Herold praised the decision in a statement, saying, The courts decision vindicates [DoL]s vigorous enforcement of the disclosure and anti-discrimination obligations federal contractors voluntarily accept in exchange for taxpayer funds. Contractors will be held to their promise to let [DoL] fully audit their employment practices.

Google has vehemently denied that it discriminates against women, publicly claiming that it has closed its gender pay gap globally. In a Sunday blogpost, Google said it was pleased with the decision and would comply with the order, providing the much more limited data set of information.

In a final hearing last month, Google argued it was financially burdensome and logistically challenging to compile and hand over the salary records the DoL had requested, saying it would have to spend up to 500 hours and $100,000 to comply with the ongoing demands. The defense earned a strong rebuke from the DoL and others in the industry who noted Google has touted its $150m diversity efforts and has a nearly $28bn annual income as one of the worlds wealthiest companies, building some of the most advanced technology.

Google would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen sponge could absorb a single drop of water, DoL attorney Ian Eliasoph said in his closing arguments last month.

Google has faced repeated criticism for its lack of transparency in the dispute. The companys lawyers unsuccessfully lobbied to get the case thrown out last month, arguing that a DoL official may have violated ethics rules by talking to the Guardian about the federal investigation.

In that interview, Herold said the data suggested that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry. Google also tried to restrict press access during one hearing.

]]>How the middle class hoards wealth and opportunity for itselfhttp://progressnothingless.com/how-the-middle-class-hoards-wealth-and-opportunity-for-itself/
Sun, 16 Jul 2017 07:57:28 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3723American society is dominated by an elite 20% that ruthlessly protects its own interests When I was growing up, my mother would sometimes threaten my brother and me with electrocution. Well, thats not quite right. In fact, the threat was of lessons in elocution, but we wittily, we thought renamed them. Growing up in a …

]]>American society is dominated by an elite 20% that ruthlessly protects its own interests

When I was growing up, my mother would sometimes threaten my brother and me with electrocution. Well, thats not quite right. In fact, the threat was of lessons in elocution, but we wittily, we thought renamed them.

Growing up in a very ordinary town just north of London and attending a very ordinary high school, one of our several linguistic atrocities was failing to pronounce the t in certain words. My mother, who was raised in rural north Wales and left school at 16, did not want us to find doors closed in a class-sensitive society simply because we didnt speak what is still called the Queens English. I will never forget the look on her face when I managed to say the word computer with neither a p nor a t.

Still, the lessons never materialised. Any lingering working-class traces in my own accent were wiped away by three disinfectant years at Oxford University. (My wife claims the adolescent accent resurfaces when I drink, but she doesnt know what shes talking about shes American.) We also had to learn how to waltz. My mother didnt want us to put a foot wrong there either.

In fact, we did just fine, in no small part because of the stable, loving home in which we were raised. But I have always been acutely sensitive to class distinctions and their role in perpetuating inequality. In fact, one of the reasons I came to the United States was to escape the cramped feeling of living in a nation still so dominated by class. I knew enough not to think I was moving to a socially mobile utopia: Id read some of the research. It has nonetheless come as something of a shock to discover that, in some important respects, the American class system is functioning more ruthlessly than the British one I escaped.

In the upper-middle-class America I now inhabit, I witness extraordinary efforts by parents to secure an elite future status for their children: tutors, coaches and weekend lessons in everything from French to fencing. But I have never heard any of my peers try to change the way their children speak. Perhaps this is simply because they know they are surrounded by other upper-middle-class kids, so there is nothing to worry about. Perhaps it is a regional thing.

But I think there is a better explanation. Americans tend to think their children will be judged by their accomplishments rather than their accents. Class position is earned, rather than simply expressed. The way to secure a higher status in a market meritocracy is by acquiring lots of merit and ensuring that our kids do, too. What ones parents are like is entirely a matter of luck, points out the philosopher Adam Swift. But he adds: What ones children are like is not. Children raised in upper-middle-class families do well in life. As a result, there is a lot of intergenerational stickiness at the top of the American income distribution more, in fact, than at the bottom with upper-middle-class status passed from one generation to the next.

Drawing class distinctions feels almost un-American. The nations self-image is of a classless society, one in which every individual is of equal moral worth, regardless of his or her economic status. This has been how the world sees the United States, too. Historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early 19th century that Americans were seen to be more equal in fortune and intelligence more equally strong, in other words than they were in any other country, or were at any other time in recorded history. So different to the countries of old Europe, still weighed down by the legacies of feudalism.

British politicians have often felt the need to urge the creation of a classless society, looking to America for inspiration as, what historian David Cannadine once called it, the pioneering and prototypical classless society. European progressives have long looked enviously at social relations in the New World. George Orwell noted the lack of servile tradition in America; the German socialist Werner Sombart noticed that the bowing and scraping before the upper classes, which produces such an unpleasant impression in Europe, is completely unknown.

This is one of many reasons socialist politics struggled to take root in the United States. A key attraction of socialist systems the main one, according to Orwell is the eradication of class distinctions. There were few to eradicate in America. I am sure that one reason Downton Abbey and The Crown so delight American audiences is their depictions of an alien world of class-based status. One reason class distinctions are less obvious in America is that pretty much everyone defines themselves as a member of the same class: the one in the middle. Nine in ten adults select the label middle class, exactly the same proportion as in 1939, according to the pollsters Gallup. No wonder that politicians have always fallen over each other to be on their side.

But in recent decades Americans at the top of the ladder have been entrenching their class position. The convenient fiction that the middle class can stretch up that far has become a difficult one to sustain. As a result, the modifications upper or lower to the general middle class category have become more important.

Class is not just about money, though it is about that. The class gap can be seen from every angle: education, security, family, health, you name it. There will also be inequalities on each of these dimensions, of course. But inequality becomes class division when all these varied elements money, education, wealth, occupation cluster together so tightly that, in practice, almost any one of them will suffice for the purposes of class definition. Class division becomes class stratification when these advantages and thus status endure across generations. In fact, upper-middle-class status is passed down to the next generation more effectively than in the past, and in the United States more than in other countries.

One benefit of the multidimensional nature of this separation is that it has reduced interdisciplinary bickering over how to define class. While economists typically focus on categorisation by income and wealth, and sociologists tend more towards occupational status and education, and anthropologists are typically more interested in culture and norms, right now it doesnt really matter, because all the trends are going the same way.

It is not just the top 1% pulling away, but the top 20%. In fact, only a very small proportion of US adults 1% to 2% define themselves as upper class. A significant minority about one in seven adopts the upper middle class description. This is quite similar to the estimates of class size generated by most sociologists, who tend to define the upper middle class as one composed of professionals and managers, or around 15% to 20% of the working-age population.

As David Azerrad of the Heritage Foundation writes: There is little appetite in America for policies that significantly restrict the ability of parents to do all they can, within the bounds of the law, to give their children every advantage in life. That is certainly true. But then Azerrad has also mis-stated the problem. No one sensible is in favour of new policies that block parents from doing the best they can for their children. Even in France the suggestion floated by the former president, Franois Hollande, to restore equality by banning homework, on the grounds that parents differ in their ability and willingness to help out, was laughed out of court. But we should want to get rid of policies that allow parents to give their children an unfair advantage and in the process restrict the opportunities of others.

Most of us want to do our best for our children. Wanting ones childrens life to go well is part of what it means to love them, write philosophers Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift in their 2014 book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships. But our natural preference for the welfare and prospects of our own children does not automatically eclipse other moral claims. We would look kindly on a father who helps his son get picked as starting pitcher for his school baseball team by practising with him every day after work. But we would probably feel differently about a father who secures the slot for his son by bribing the coach. Why? After all, each father has sacrificed something, time in one case, money in the other, to advance his child. The difference is team selection should be based on merit, not money. A principle of fairness is at stake.

So, where is the line drawn? The best philosophical treatment of this question I have found is the one by Swift and Brighouse. Their suggestion is that, while parents have every right to act in ways that will help their childrens lives go well, they do not have the right to confer on them a competitive advantage in other words, to ensure not just that they do well but that they do better than others. This is because, in a society with finite rewards, improving the situation of one child necessarily worsens that of another, at least in relative terms: Whatever parents do to confer competitive advantage is not neutral in its effects on other children it does not leave untouched, but rather is detrimental to, those other childrens prospects in the competition for jobs and associated rewards.

The trouble is that in the real world this seems like a distinction without a difference. What they call competitive advantage-conferring parental activities will almost always be also helping-your-kid-flourish parental activities. If I read bedtime stories to my son, he will develop a richer vocabulary and may learn to love reading and have a more interesting and fulfilling life. But it could also help him get better grades than his classmates, giving him a competitive advantage in college admissions. Swift and Brighouse suggest a parent should not even aim to give their child a competitive advantage: It would be a little odd, perhaps even a little creepy, if the ultimate aim of her endeavours were that her child is better off than others.

I think this is too harsh. In a society with a largely open, competitive labour market, it is not creepy to want your children to end up higher on the earnings ladder than others. Not only will this bring them a higher income, and all the accompanying choices and security, it is also likely to bring them safer and more interesting work. Relative position matters it is one reason, after all, that relative mobility is of such concern to policymakers. Although I think Brighouse and Swift go too far, they are on to something important with their distinction between the kind of parental behaviour that merely helps your own children and the kind that is detrimental to others. Thats what I call opportunity hoarding.

Opportunity hoarding does not result from the workings of a large machine but from the cumulative effect of individual choices and preferences. Taken in isolation, they may feel trivial: nudging your daughter into a better college with a legacy preference [giving applicants places on the basis of being related to alumni of the college]; helping the son of a professional contact to an internship; a single vote on a municipal council to retain low-density zoning restrictions. But, like many micro-preferences, to borrow a term from economist Thomas Schelling, they can have strong effects on overall culture and collective outcomes.

Over recent decades, institutions that once primarily served racist goals legacy admissions to keep out Jewish students, zoning laws to keep out black families have not been abandoned but have been softened, normalised and subtly re-purposed to help us sustain the upper-middle-class status. They remain, then, barriers to a more open, more genuinely competitive and fairer society. I wont insult your intelligence by pretending there are no costs here. By definition, reducing opportunity hoarding will mean some losses for the upper middle class.

But they will be small. Our neighbourhoods will be a little less upmarket but also less boring. Our kids will rub shoulders with some poorer kids in the school corridor. They might not squeak into an Ivy League college, and they may have to be content going to an excellent public university. But if we arent willing to entertain even these sacrifices, there is little hope. There will be some material costs, too. The big challenge is to equalise opportunities to acquire human capital and therefore increase the number of true competitors in the labour market. This will require, among other things, some increased public investment. Where will the money come from? It cant all come from the super-rich. Much of it will have to come from the upper middle class. From me andyou.

This is an extract from Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What To Do About It by Richard V Reeves (Brookings Institution Press, 2017)

HOW TO STAY AHEAD – OR PLAY FAIR

As parents, we naturally want our children to flourish. But that laudable desire slides into opportunity hoarding when we use our money, power or position to give our own children exclusive access to certain goods or chances. The effect is to strengthen class barriers.

1. Fix an internship using our networks. Internships are becoming more important but are too often stitched up privately. Its worse if theyre unpaid. Instead: insist on paid internships, openly recruited.

2. Take our own kids to work for the day. Children learn what work is from adults. Instead: try bringing somebody elses kid to work, perhaps by partnering with local charities.

3. Be a Nimby. By shutting out low-income housing from our neighbourhoods with planning restrictions, we keep less affluent kids away from our local schools and communities. Instead: be a Yimby, vote and argue for more mixed housing in your area.

4. Write cheques to PTA funds. Many of us want to support the school our children attend. This tilts the playing field, however, since other schools cant do the same. Instead: get your PTA to give half the donations to a school in a poor area.

]]>Honolulu fire: three dead after blaze breaks out in high-rise buildinghttp://progressnothingless.com/honolulu-fire-three-dead-after-blaze-breaks-out-in-high-rise-building/
Sat, 15 Jul 2017 09:39:09 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3696More than 60 firefighters tackle the incident at Marco Polo apartments in the Hawaiian capital At least three people have been killed after a fire broke out in a high-rise apartment building in Honolulu, Hawaii. The blaze started on the 26th floor of the Marco Polo apartments and spread at least one floor higher and …

Troy Yasuda, who lives in a building across the street, was giving water to people who evacuated. They were choking from the smoke, he said, adding that people told him they evacuated through dark stairwells.

Police were shouting through megaphones for people still inside to come down, Yasuda said. He watched as people were carried out.

Its been an orderly evacuation, said security guard Leonard Rosa, who was answering phones from the front lobby of the 31-story building near Waikiki. Police and firefighters were going door-to-door, he said.

Firefighters were checking on reports that there were people trapped in their units, Jenkins said.

One resident who declined to give his name said he made it to safety after climbing the stairs from the 29th floor. The man said there was so much smoke, he could hardly see.

At least 80 people were killed on 14 June when a fire gutted the 24-storey Grenfell Tower apartments in London.

]]>John McCain predicts Republican healthcare bill will failhttp://progressnothingless.com/john-mccain-predicts-republican-healthcare-bill-will-fail/
Mon, 10 Jul 2017 09:55:05 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3546Unpopular bill further imperilled after senators returned to their states and faced constituents strongly opposed to it A senior US Republican senator has predicted that the bill to roll back Obamacare would probably fail, adding to strongly opposed to it. Senators return to Washington on Monday. The Senate bill keeps much of Obamacare intact but …

]]>Unpopular bill further imperilled after senators returned to their states and faced constituents strongly opposed to it

A senior US Republican senator has predicted that the bill to roll back Obamacare would probably fail, adding to growing signs that the bill is in trouble.

My view is that its probably going to be dead, John McCain said on the CBS program Face the Nation.

The Senate bill, which faces unified Democratic opposition, has been further imperilled during a week-long recess where several Republican senators have had to return to their states and face constituents strongly opposed to it. Senators return to Washington on Monday.

The Senate bill keeps much of Obamacare intact but strips away most of its funding. It repeals most Obamacare taxes, overhauls the laws tax credits and ends its Medicaid expansion. It also goes beyond repealing Obamacare by cutting funding for the Medicaid program beginning in 2025.

The White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said on Sunday on Fox News that President Donald Trump expected Congress to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The Republican senator Ted Cruz on Sunday said failure to pass the bill was not an option and the Senate effort had to focus on lowering premiums. He pointed to an amendment he offered that is being scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which assesses the impact of legislation.

Cruzs amendment would allow insurers to offer plans that do not comply with Obamacares mandate that they charge sick and healthy people the same rates and that they cover a set of essential health benefits, such as maternity care and prescription drugs, as long as they also offer plans that do comply with the regulations.

The amendment has drawn the support of conservative senators and groups, who say the it will help lower premiums. But moderate Republicans and outside critics say it will erode protections for people with pre-existing conditions and make their insurance unaffordable.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, aims to hold a vote on the legislation, which needs the support of at least 50 of the Senates 52 Republicans, before a six-week recess that begins on 29 July.

Yet even McConnell cast doubt on the bills prospects for passage last week.

Speaking at a luncheon in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell said if Congress failed to follow through on a seven-year pledge to repeal Obamacare then it must act to shore up private health insurance markets, comments seen as providing a pathway to a bipartisan deal to fix the health system.

]]>McConnell hints healthcare vote could fall short: ‘I’m a guy with a Rubik’s cube’http://progressnothingless.com/mcconnell-hints-healthcare-vote-could-fall-short-im-a-guy-with-a-rubiks-cube/
Fri, 07 Jul 2017 09:30:04 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3456Senate majority leader spoke to impasse over key aspects of Republican bill at an event Thursday, but said no action was not an alternative Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday hinted that the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could fall short as conservatives and moderates in his conference remain at …

]]>Senate majority leader spoke to impasse over key aspects of Republican bill at an event Thursday, but said no action was not an alternative

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday hinted that the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could fall short as conservatives and moderates in his conference remain at an impasse over key aspects of the bill.

Before leaving Washington for a week-long Fourth of July recess, McConnell delayed a vote on the Republican healthcare bill after it was clear there was not enough support for the plan, which would leave 22 million fewer people without health insurance over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur, McConnell told constituents at a Rotary Club lunch on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

No action is not an alternative, he added. Weve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.

Its encouraging that Sen McConnell today acknowledged that the issues with the exchanges are fixable, and opened the door to bipartisan solutions to improve our healthcare system, Schumer said in a statement.

As weve said time and time again, Democrats are eager to work with Republicans to stabilize the markets and improve the law. At the top of the list should be ensuring cost-sharing payments are permanent, which will protect healthcare for millions.

McConnell faces a daunting task as he works behind the scenes with senators to craft a bill that bridges the ideological divide within his conference. Moderates, especially those from states that opted to expand Medicaid under the ACA (also known as Obamacare) are wary of scaling back spending on the health insurance program for low-income Americans, and conservatives are irked the plan does not go further to repeal the law.

Im in the position of a guy with a Rubiks cube trying to twist the dial in such a way to get at least 50 members of my conference who can agree to a version of repealing and replacing Obamcare, McConnell told Kentucky voters at a town hall-style event on Thursday, according to NBC. That is a very timely subject that Im grappling with as we speak.

As the debate over healthcare rages, Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania who supports the bill, suggested during a televised town hall on Wednesday that McConnell was several weeks away from winning enough support for a vote. Asked why Republicans were struggling to fulfill a years-long campaign promise, Toomey offered a candid reply.

Look, I didnt expect Donald Trump to win, he said. I think most of my colleagues didnt, so we didnt expect to be in this situation.

]]>North Korea: US and its allies face shortage of good optionshttp://progressnothingless.com/north-korea-us-and-its-allies-face-shortage-of-good-options/
Thu, 06 Jul 2017 11:39:59 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3429Pyongyangs latest missile test has revived calls to deal with Kim Jong-un. But all possible strategies carry huge risks North Koreas all options are on the table for blocking its nuclear weapons programme. Talk of a surgical strike often surfaces when politicians are contemplating military intervention in conflicts or troubled areas around the globe, perhaps …

Pyongyangs nuclear ambitions, once a somewhat abstract strategic concern for bureaucrats in Washington, have suddenly become more pressing. The secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said earlier this year that all options are on the table for blocking its nuclear weapons programme.

Talk of a surgical strike often surfaces when politicians are contemplating military intervention in conflicts or troubled areas around the globe, perhaps because it carries connotations of a focused, efficient attack, with minimal collateral damage, like a clean surgical incision. That is a distracting illusion.

There is no option for military intervention in North Korea that would not cost civilian lives, and carry a high risk of dangerous escalation.

The lives most immediately at risk in the case of open conflict are those of South Koreans. Nearly half the population lives within 50 miles of the demilitarised zone which separates the northern and southern halves of the peninsula, according to the New York Times.

Parts of Seoul are within range of rocket launchers and guns hidden in caves, bunkers and tunnels along the border. As recently as 2010, North Korean shelling killed two marines and injured civilians.

It is possible to intercept artillery shells, rockets and other low altitude weapons, through systems such as Israels Iron Dome, but South Korea has not got any equivalent, only systems aimed at ballistic missiles.

If North Korea unleashes these on the south, even the most optimistic estimates say thousands of lives would be lost in days of attacks on military targets, rising to tens or even hundreds of thousands if Pyongyang aims at civilians.

Hereditary leader Kim Jong-un also has ballistic missiles that could reach sites across South Korea and Japan, and a stockpile of chemical and nuclear weapons.

This arsenal is thought to have been built up as a deterrent, but few think Kim would hesitate to use the weapons if he felt his own life or power was in immediate threat.

Kim and his inner circle are also secretive and cautious, and western intelligence systems inside the state are extremely weak.

In 2008 analysts and officials were left speculating for months about whether his father Kim Jong-il was alive or dead, after he slipped out of public view. News that he had suffered a stroke in August only leaked into the outside world in winter.

But perhaps the biggest risk in taking military action in North Korea is the states cultivated unpredictability. Once fighting starts, there are many ways and reasons both sides could escalate, analyst Anthony Cordesman told the NY Times. Stopping it would be much harder.

]]>Activists cry cowardice as Republican senators shut doors to healthcare town hallshttp://progressnothingless.com/activists-cry-cowardice-as-republican-senators-shut-doors-to-healthcare-town-halls/
Thu, 06 Jul 2017 09:39:57 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3426Pat Toomeys closed-door talk saw him accused of not having the courage to speak to those affected, while Ted Cruz also faced dissent at his ticket-only event At a town hall in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night, Republican senator Pat Toomey faced an angry protest over his role in the GOP healthcare bill, while Ted Cruz …

]]>Pat Toomeys closed-door talk saw him accused of not having the courage to speak to those affected, while Ted Cruz also faced dissent at his ticket-only event

At a town hall in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night, Republican senator Pat Toomey faced an angry protest over his role in the GOP healthcare bill, while Ted Cruz was heckled over his suggested amendment to the legislation at an event in Texas.

Scores of people gathered outside the ABC27 studio in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Toomey was holding what had been billed as a town hall meeting.

But in reality just eight audience members were allowed into the invite-only event, and their questions had been pre-screened by the news channel.

The closed-door approach did not endear Toomey to the sign-waving protesters outside, who accused the senator of not having courage to speak to people who would be personally affected by the Senate healthcare legislation he helped to write.

Cruz, meanwhile, was heckled at what in theory should have been a safe event; a ticket-only town hall veterans discussion hosted by Concerned Veterans for America a rightwing advocacy group financed by the Koch brothers.

Audience questions for Cruz at the event in McKinney, north of Dallas, had been screened in advance by the CVA, but two audience members went rogue to quiz and interrupt the Texas senator over his proposed tweak to the Senate bill.

The Better Care Reconciliation act, which the Congressional Budget Office says would leave an additional 22m people without healthcare, is currently stuck in the Senate without enough votes to pass. Cruzs amendment would allow insurance companies to sell plans that do not include the Affordable Care Act (ACA)-mandated essential health benefits, in a move he claims would reduce costs.

At the town hall, however, Cruzs adversaries repeatedly shouted him down as he attempted to defend his measure.

When you mandate what every policy has to cover you drive up the cost of insurance, Cruz said, which means fewer people can afford healthcare. The essential health benefits also made people pay for coverage that they dont necessarily want, he said.

Its all fine and good to mandate that everybody get coverage for everything at all times, but what happens in practice is the prices go so high that people are left out in the cold.

There are issues with the ACA. There are things they can do to bring down costs, Fraser said.

But they cant just dismantle this bill that has really done so much to protect people, and make sure people arent discriminated against because of pre-existing conditions.

Also among the protesters was Josh Burkholder, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for US congress in Pennsylvanias fourth district last November.

Theyre giving a huge tax break to the 1% here, Burkholder said, also by phone, of the Senate legislation.

Its just awful. Making a giant tax break for the ultra rich while simultaneously pulling the rug out from under the poor of the country is just disgusting.

The majority of Senate Republicans have so far ducked interactions with the public during recess week supposedly a time for elected officials to return to their districts and meet with constituents.

The Washington Post reported that just four GOP senators planned to attend Fourth of July parades, while only three Cruz, Bill Cassidy from Louisiana and Jerry Moran from Kansas are scheduled to hold public town halls.

]]>In Seattle US old-timers rediscover the high life on cannabis tourshttp://progressnothingless.com/in-seattle-us-old-timers-rediscover-the-high-life-on-cannabis-tours/
Sun, 02 Jul 2017 11:40:37 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3312Retirement home residents take a trip to a producer Forget bingo, tea dances and seaside trips. Residents from a chain of Seattle retirement homes are going on Pot for Beginners tours to learn about and buy cannabis in the city, where its now legal. Connie Schick said her son roared with laughter when he heard …

Forget bingo, tea dances and seaside trips. Residents from a chain of Seattle retirement homes are going on Pot for Beginners tours to learn about and buy cannabis in the city, where its now legal.

Connie Schick said her son roared with laughter when he heard she was joining a field trip to a cannabis-growing operation, an extraction plant and shop. The 79-year-old, who smoked the odd joint in the 70s, wanted to know how legalisation has changed the way the drug is used and produced.

Schick was one of eight women, from their late 60s to mid-80s, who descended from a minibus emblazoned with the name of their assisted living centre, El Dorado West, outside Vela cannabis store last Tuesday.

You can only play so many games of bingo, said Schick. My son thought it was hilarious that I was coming here, but Im open-minded and want to stay informed. Cannabis has come so far from the days when you smoked a sly joint and got into trouble if they found out. We used to call it hemp then and didnt know its strength. It just used to make me sleepy, so I didnt see the point.

Schick, who uses a wheelchair after suffering a stroke, is interested in the therapeutic effects of cannabis. Its so different now. There are so many ways you can take it, and all these different types to help with aches and pains.

They used to say it was a gateway drug to other things, like cocaine Lots of peoples views are changing.

Much of this is attributed to the ageing of the baby-boomer generation, who dabbled with the drug when they were young and are returning to it for medical or recreational use as it becomes legal and more normalised. Cannabis is now legal for medical use in 29 states and for medical and recreational use in eight (since 2012 in Seattle and the rest of Washington state).

Most of the women on the tour were more interested in the medical use, although Denise Roux, 67, said: I would like to buy it to get high too but Im a cheap high, it doesnt take much.

A seminar over sandwiches was held for thegroup as they sat in front of the large windows of the cultivation room, where they could see scores of plants growing under intense lighting.

They were told about the different strains: uplifting sativa plants and more sedating indicas. They learned about tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which gives a high, and cannabidiol (CBD) which does not, making CBD-rich cannabis appealing for medical use. A scientist in a lab coat who worked in the processing facility spoke about terpenes fragrant oils secreted by glands in the flower that give strains their different smells and flavours. Vials were sniffed and various ways to take cannabis were also covered, including smoking, vaporising and eating it.

Roux, a retired administrative assistant, said: Im a big Google girl, but I wanted to talk to people who know about it so I can understand it all better. I have an autoimmune disease, which stops my appetite, and Im interested in marijuana from that standpoint. She added she had used cannabis recreationally in the 80s and had returned to it to help with her illness. I use a vape. It makes me sleepy and its a pain control, and it gives me an appetite.

After the briefing, it was time for shopping. The store looked like an upmarket jewellers, with muted lighting and art on the walls, except the glass cabinets in the store were stocked with pre-rolled joints, edibles including chocolates and sweets, vape pens and bags of different strains of cannabis rather than diamond rings and necklaces.

Darlene Johnson, 85, a former nurse, perused their contents. On the advice of a bearded bud tender, she bought a deep tissue and joint gel and a tincture to put in drinks, which she hopes will help with her severe neck pain. I wanted a non-psychoactive option, she said. I dont want to get high. I used to work in the emergency room and saw people come in sick from taking too many drugs, though not usually marijuana.

Her friend, Nancy Mitchell, 80, has never tried cannabis. She has MS and had read that cannabis could help with her symptoms. I wanted to know more details, she said. My kids keep telling me, Mom, try it. I dont want to smoke things, but I see there are other ways.

Smoking is not allowed at El Dorado West. Village Concepts, which runs the chain, has a no-smoking policy and it is illegal to consume cannabis in public in the state.

The chains director of corporate development, Tracy Willis, said: There was one man who was smoking it on his patio and he refused to stop, so he had to leave. If youre using an edible, we dont have any issue with it, thats your own business. We treat it as a recreational thing.

The tours began in response to questions from residents.They wanted to know where it was sold, how much money was made from it, where it was grown, said Willis. Weve had a good reaction [to the tours] from nine out of 10 relatives, but some are horrified. One angry daughter said we were encouraging marijuana use. Her mother told her to butt out.

]]>Challenges to Silicon Valley wont just come from Brusselshttp://progressnothingless.com/challenges-to-silicon-valley-wont-just-come-from-brussels/
Sun, 02 Jul 2017 07:18:15 +0000http://progressnothingless.com/?p=3306Fine of 2.4bn levied on Google is a sign of the continued erosion of US tech firms domination of the internet The whopping for abusing its dominance as a search engine has taken Silicon Valley aback. It has also reignited American paranoia about the motives of European regulators, whom many Valley types seem to regard …

]]>Fine of 2.4bn levied on Google is a sign of the continued erosion of US tech firms domination of the internet

The whopping 2.4bn fine levied by the European commission on Google for abusing its dominance as a search engine has taken Silicon Valley aback. It has also reignited American paranoia about the motives of European regulators, whom many Valley types seem to regard as stooges of Mathias Dpfner, the chief executive of German media group Axel Springer, president of the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers and a fierce critic of Google.

US paranoia is expressed in various registers. They range from President Obamas observation in 2015 that all the Silicon Valley companies that are doing business there [Europe] find themselves challenged, in some cases not completely sincerely. Because some of those countries have their own companies who want to displace ours, to the furious off-the-record outbursts from senior tech executives after some EU agency or other has dared to challenge the supremacy of a US-based tech giant.

The overall tenor of these rants (based on personal experience of being on the receiving end) runs as follows. First, you Europeans dont get tech; second, you dont like or understand innovation; and third, youre maddened by envy because none of you schmucks has been able to come up with a world-beating tech company.

The charge sheet underpinning American paranoia says that the EU has always had it in for US companies. Microsoft, for example, has been done over no fewer than three times for various infringements of competition rules: 500m in 2004, 600m in 2008 and 561m in 2013. Intel was fined 1.6bn in 2009. Now Google has been socked for 2.4bn; and Facebook has already been fined 110m for providing the European commission with misleading information about its acquisition of WhatsApp. And then of course there is the commissions insistence that Apple should repay the 13bn in back taxes that it owes the Irish government because of overgenerous tax breaks provided to the company. (Ireland is vigorously contesting that ruling, making it the first government in history to turn down a windfall that would fund its health service for an entire year.)

This allegedly biased record needs to be seen in a wider context, however. Its hardly surprising that the tech companies in the frame are American given that all the global tech giants are US-based. But in fact the European commission has also come down hard on local infringers of competition rules. In July 2016, for example, European truck manufacturers were fined 2.93bn for colluding on prices for 14 years. In 2008 several European car glass manufacturers were fined 1.35bn for illegal market sharing and exchanging commercially sensitive information. In 2007 the Spanish telco Telefnica was fined 151m for setting unfair prices in its domestic broadband market. And so on, so that if you include all years since 1990, the total amount of fines imposed by the European commissions competition regulator comes to 26.75bn.

Given that record, you could say that the commission is actually a rather good regulator. But its also clear that there are significant differences between the European and American approach to competition law and antitrust. Some years ago, for example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US investigated Google for the same behaviour that has landed it with the current huge fine. But in the end the FTC decided not to press charges. The European commission, provided with much the same evidence, reached the opposite conclusion.

As the commissions statement explains: Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets. Otherwise, there would be a risk that a company once dominant in one market (even if this resulted from competition on the merits) would be able to use this market power to cement/further expand its dominance, or leverage it into separate markets.

Google was found to have abused its dominance as a search engine by giving illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service. Way back in 2002, the company had launched a price-comparison service called Froogle, later renamed Google Shopping. In 2008 it changed how it worked by systematically giving prominence to its own shopping-comparison results (for which it received payment from advertisers) and thereby in effect downgrading other shopping-comparison sites that might otherwise have figured highly in search results. This the commission deemed illegal.

And so it is. But to lay observers theres something quaint about the actual nub of the dispute shopping-comparison sites. I mean to say, theyre soooo yesterday. Nowadays, half of all shopping-related queries begin not on Google, but on Amazon. So the complaints about anti-competitive behaviour that resulted in last weeks ruling started in 2008 nine years (about 63 internet years) ago. What this episode highlights is the growing time lag between the detection of illegal behaviour on the part of tech companies and its eventual punishment a lag determined by the inevitably slow pace of detailed legal investigation (often slowed further by intensive political lobbying) and the pace of tech-industry change. If societies are to be able to bring companies such as Google under effective democratic control, then we have to speed up this regulatory process. Otherwise we will continually be locking the door long after the horse has bolted.

Which of course is exactly the way Silicon Valley likes it. This is a culture, remember, whose motto is move fast and break things (the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerbergs original exhortation to his developers, withdrawn only when he discovered that one of the things that might get broken is democracy). In the tech industry, corporate leaders are hooked on the virtues of disruption, creative destruction and the belief that it is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission. Most of them subscribe to the famous dictum of Scott McNealy, made when he was chief executive of Sun Microsystems: You have zero privacy get over it.

Given that mindset, its not surprising that the industry is not just irritated but baffled by European scepticism and regulatory pushback. Although most Silicon Valley moguls see themselves as progressives they dont seem to understand cultural differences. (They dont understand politics, either.) Witness the Facebook bosss touching belief that the worlds problems could be solved if everyone were part of the Facebook community. Or the view of Googles former executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, that the presence of communication technologies will chip away at most autocratic governments, since the odds against a restrictive, information-shy regime dealing with an empowered citizenry armed with personal fact-checking devices get progressively worse with each embarrassing incident. When he tried that on Cambridge students a few years ago, some of them wondered what he had been smoking.

The same cannot be said for other parts of the world that Google & co hope to dominate. China and Russia do things their own way, for example, and are entirely untroubled by legal niceties. As far as China is concerned, in 2010 Google was given the choice of obeying government demands or shutting down its Chinese search engine; it chose the latter option and is having to agree to government controls if it is to be allowed back. In Russia, Google reached a settlement with the local regulator to loosen restrictions on search engines built into its Android mobile operating system, to allow Russian competitors a share of the pie. Similar concessions will be required to operate in Iran and other Middle Eastern states. These regimes are the real enemies that US paranoids should fear. So while the 2.4bn fine may be unpalatable (though easily affordable) for Google, it should thank its lucky stars. At least it got a hearing.

John Naughton is professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University. He writes a weekly column in The New Review.